UAW

  • GM’s Battery Plant Opens Non-Union
    Al Benchich
    Mar 19 2010 - 6:55pm
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    The “reinvention” of the “New GM” began with the opening of a lithium-ion battery plant in Brownstown, Michigan, near Detroit. The event not only signals GM’s return to electric vehicles—for the first time in about 30 years, GM has opened a non-union plant in the U.S. . . .

  • GM’s “Northern Strategy”: Go Non-Union

    The “reinvention” of the “New GM” has begun with the opening of a lithium-ion battery plant in Brownstown, Michigan, near Detroit. The event was remarkable not only because the Brownstown plant signals GM’s return to the production of an electric vehicle but also because, for the first time in about 30 years, GM has opened a non-union plant in the U.S.

  • A Pattern of Retreat: The Decline of Pattern Bargaining
    Kim Moody
    Feb 16 2010 - 10:02am
    The age-old goal of unions has been to “take wages out of competition.” But after a 30-year employer onslaught, national pattern bargaining has been largely devastated or has become a top-down conduit for concessions.
  • UAW–Ford 'No' vote still echoes through plants

    October’s national “No” vote on concessions is still ricocheting off shop floors at Ford.

    The scene is the UAW Local 600 Ford Rouge DDMP (vehicle frame) Plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Management “creatively” proposes a shift that would hurt family life even without overtime! But workers beat it back.

  • Pattern Bargaining in Reverse: UAW Pushes for More Concessions at Delphi
    Gregg Shotwell
    Feb 8 2010 - 2:59pm
    GM can’t live without parts supplier Delphi but can’t live with union wages. The United Auto Workers is trying to break Delphi's master agreement, but didn’t anticipate rank-and-file anger, which has halted its concessions locomotive.
  • Asbestos Rains Down on Chilly Delphi Workers, but UAW's in a Deep Freeze

    The slumlord at the GM-owned Delphi plant in Lockport, New York, turns off the heat every day between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. "Little Hitler," as the general foreman is known, thinks his dial-down saves GM money. Hammering pipes and raining asbestos may ring a different tune on the company cash register, but Little Hitler can’t see the dollars wasted for the pennies he’s counting.

  • Auto Worker Activists Regroup, Prepare to Fight Anew

    “A job is a right, we’re going to fight, fight, fight!” The chant filled the cavernous hotel conference room with anger and enthusiasm as the largest rank-and-file auto worker meeting in many years came to a close. Nearly 100 retired and active workers from the Big 3 and a dozen parts suppliers met outside of Detroit last weekend to discuss strategies for rank-and-file organizing after months of concessions and plant closings agreed to by the UAW.

  • Labor Notes Conference: Home-based Workers Swelling Labor's Ranks, Still Struggling for Dignity and Power

    One unique aspect of the Labor Notes Conference is the special meetings that allow far-flung activists to gather and share information on a rare cross-union basis. This year's April 23-25 conference in Detroit will feature a daylong meeting of those involved in organizing and representing home-based workers—challenging work undertaken in the absence of a common workplace.

  • ‘There Are No Tea-baggers in Soup Lines’

    Auto workers outshone the tea-party types as dueling demonstrations took place in the snow outside the Detroit Auto Show today. Small numbers of auto workers gathered to say government should use its role in the auto bailout to direct the factories toward job-creating green products such as high-speed trains and wind turbines—and should enact Medicare for All.

  • Auto Workers, Tea Partisans Square Off in Detroit

    Auto workers, retirees, and supporters will gather in front of this year’s Detroit Auto Show on January 11 to make clear the notion of a “jobless recovery” is no recovery at all in a state with the highest unemployment in the nation (officially at 14.7 percent).